Types of Audience Interaction

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Active Interaction is where you involve the audience by making them part of the program. This can be achieved by giving the audience some roll in the production.

• Reading
• Skits
• Drawing
• Singing
• Clapping
• Assigned action

These are just some of the ways that you could do it. 

    In the video above I talk to the kids about using their own lives, their experiences, to help them write better stories. I talk to them about my experience as a kid with bats, and how my dad tried to scare my brothers and me, as we were leaving the house one day. My Dad told us that bats can land in your hair and get stuck. Our actual responses to my dad's warning were very funny, so I wrote them into Bill the Bat Loves Halloween. 

    In the video clip above, I tell the story of "Bill the Bat Loves Halloween" and have asked the kids to raise their hands in the air every time my childhood experiences were heard or spotted in the story.

 This request requires the kids to recall what those experiences were, and it requires focusing on the task of listening and watching. It also gives the whole audience the opportunity to be participants. 

   We are all wired differently, and where one student thrives on the involvement, others will hide from it. Our job when creating interactive programming is to give them the opportunity. 

The Singing Competiton

I took a song I wrote called "It's All in the Words" and I turned it into a signing competition. This is how I start one of my programs. I pull some students out of the audiences to become my back-up singers and then I split the audience up in halves to create two teams. I explain to the kids what they will sing and when, and then the magic starts.

This segment not only allows me the chance to talk to the kids about writing in a fun way, but it also gives me the opportunity to use them in a playfully manner and start to create a connection between us that will become casual, conversational and real.  

Passive interaction are those moments that don't require the students to do anything but watch and listen. 

• Readings
• Storytelling
• Lesson taught
• Sharing personal moments
• Photos

      In this video, I have already talked to the kids about coming up with detail for their stories, and they are now about to watch a photo array on the screen. The words from the song and the images of my daughter's bedroom filled with stuffed animals work together, to teach kids about detail and to use what is around them to help them write. The song starts out as passive interaction, and then I ask them to become active. 

    Adding the active interaction at this stage is my choice, and it could turn out to be a bad one. Clapping is loud and can overpower most performers vocals. I need to have a good feel for my audience before I encourage it.

Responsive participation is getting the students involved by getting them to do or say something that repeats what you do or say. 

• Repeat a reoccurring word
• Call out a character's name after you say it
• I say a word, you say the same word
• I clap, you clap
• I snap, you snap
• I jump, you jump

In this video clip, I get the kids to do what I'm doing as I am doing it. Here I am teaching the kids about rhyme, and rhythm.

Instinctive participation is getting the students involved by asking them questions that gets them to raise their hands. 

• How many of you like to read?
• Who likes cats?
• Who eats pickles with mayonnaise?
• Who owns an elephant?
• Does anyone like sports?

    Lots of authors use this method during their programs, and if you do, you do. I just don't. I don't include interaction unless it serves a purpose, and this type of participation doesn't really get the kids involved. It's just an instinctive reaction. 

Here is my point:

   If I say, "Do You...," to an audience of little kids, and pause, you will see 50 hands in the air before I even finish the sentence. That is an instinctive reaction younger kids have to certain phrasing. 

   With the younger grades, I do my best to stay away from anything that sounds like I am asking a question. WHY, you ask? 

• It opens a flood gate of verbal responses
• Once it starts it becomes contagious
• A school's quite sign rarely works in large groups
• It then takes time to get them under control
• You lose program time with each occurrence
• It puts an unnatural strain on the vocal cords

    Anytime you have to quiet an audience down, the vocal strain is off the charts. These are the moments in a presentation that can leave you hoarse at the end of the day.

   So, for those reasons, I stay away from things that I know might bring on that reaction.